In this post, I would like to share with you my approach to keyword investigation process through Sensor Tower service. Sensor Tower is a great tool for app store optimization.

Sensor Tower Home Page

Sensor Tower has a wide range of functionality. Users can discover and identify the most worthwhile keywords, track keywords’ ranking, and translate keywords for localization. Additionally, competitor and review analysis tools are available.

There are some points I’d like to outline before I deep dive into the keyword investigation process.

Disclaimer

1) About 80% of search queries in app store relate to the category of application or functionality it does. Thus, we can point out three groups of queries: a) category; b) function; c) central idea.

2) Usually, people type specific phrases instead of single words, so it’s important to find relevant phrases rather than to concentrate on single words.

3) It’s well-known that app store keyword rankings drop dramatically seven days after launch. It happens because Apple gives all new apps a boost during the first seven days. It’s obvious if you look at the rankings of my memory game for the word “memory” through Sensor Tower tool.

Keyword Rankings for “memory”

The decision is to make two bulks of keywords. The first bulk for the first week with a higher competition level. The second bulk with lower level of competition will replace the first after a week.

Now let’s get down to the keywords investigation process.

Keywords Investigation Process

1) Firstly, you should spy on keywords and gain ideas from your competitors. It’s possible and absolutely free on the Sensor Tower home page. Just type in your competitor’s title in search area.

Keyword Spy

2) Then you should conduct review analysis on your competitors. Usually, it helps to find more ideas for search queries because reviews made directly by end users. Sensor Tower offers that kind of function, but it isn’t included in the free plan.

Review Analysis

This module is really powerful. It allows you to analyze mentions frequency in terms of amount.

3) When you have a large amount of ideas, you can enrich them by synonyms through Google’s keyword tool or Sensor Tower’s keyword suggestion module. It’s very simple to do; just type in the keywords that you have already found and then you will receive suggestions from the system.

Keywords Suggestion Module

Also, you should brainstorm more words and phrases with your friends and potential end users. It can help you to gain some insights.

4) As soon as you generate keywords and phrases, it’s time to dig deep into its analysis. For that, I recommend Sensor Tower’s keyword research module.

Keyword Research Module

Here you are given very important metrics: traffic, difficulty and number of apps that use the specific keyword or phrase you are analyzing. Traffic indicates the demand for that keyword; in other words, how popular that particular keyword or phrase is. The difficulty metric indicates how difficult it will be for your app to rank higher for that keyword. Take into consideration the fact that the traffic and difficulty metrics are rated out of ten points.

5) Make the pivot table of all the keywords and phrases after keyword research module is applied. Bear in mind three main criteria to sort the keywords. They are: relevance that is identified on your own, and difficulty and traffic which have lower priority.

Conclusion

I’ve shared some tips with you on how to perform keyword investigation using the Sensor Tower tool. Very soon I’ll share some tips on how to name the app and fill in the keyword field.